Trial of the Century Read online

  “I also told you to shut up. You are my problem. Because of you I’ll be dropping vee to allow a courier to match trajectories as we near out next transit portal. It will put us a full day behind schedule and cause us to arrive late at our next port of call. You may think that’s a small thing, Mr. Conroy, but I assure you the many passengers onboard do not, nor does the cruiseline that employs us, nor the many businesses at our destination that are relying on our custom for their own livelihood. And yet, I consider it a better outcome than having a hole blasted in my vessel. So, we will be accommodating the Arconi vessel, and you and your animal will be transferred when it arrives.”

  “Wait, I thought the Arconi were only sending someone to brainstorm with the doctor and come up with a cure for Reggie. No one said anything about leaving The Mumby.”

  “The situation is too unstable. What’s to keep your animal from exploding in the middle of the Arconi’s visit?”

  “That’s not going to happen. Malsh said we had twenty days!”

  “While the good doctor is a brilliant physician and expert in many varieties of medicine, it also admits to an incomplete knowledge in the realm of buffalo dogs. I questioned it extensively about its estimate, and I am not comfortable with the margin of error in its diagnosis.”

  “Which is why Malsh wanted to bring in the Arconi.”

  “That may be true, and your creature may not yet be quite the threat it appears, but I’m not going to risk my ship. Not when the Arcons have agreed to take you and your animal away.”

  “I won’t go!”

  “I’m not asking for either your permission or approval, Mr. Conroy. I’m telling you what is going to happen.”

  “Captain, you don’t understand. I have a history with the Arconi. The fact that they were so quick to agree to send someone here is proof of that. They’re hoping to get some leverage on me, and I’d gladly give it to them if I knew for sure they’d heal Reggie. But if you simply give me to them outright they’ll have everything they want, and with no reason to find a cure for my buffalito.”

  “Perhaps. But again, my first concern is for this ship. Under the circumstances, I am granting a premature end to your contract, without prejudice. The current situation notwithstanding, I have had nothing but positive reports of your performance in service to this ship. Should you manage to resolve all of your problems and wish to rejoin us, and can manage to leave your personal drama behind, I will reinstate your position here. In the meantime, I suggest you pack. You’ll be transferring to the Arconi vessel as soon as it can link up with us.”

  “I’m not going! I’ll meet with their experts, but neither Reggie nor I are leaving this ship.”

  “Oh, you’re leaving. Preferably of your own volition and on your own feet, or in restraints and a portable brig-box if it comes to that. Do not test me on this, Mr. Conroy. This is my ship, and I won’t suffer anyone on it whom I do not choose. Now get out. We’re finished.”

  *

  I left the Captain and wandered the ship a while, just for the sake of movement to clear my head, with no destination in mind. Even so, my feet found their way to one of The Mumby’s dining rooms. The day’s first breakfast service had just ended and I had a good half hour before the second service began, but there was still plenty available for self-service. I didn’t know if food would actually do any good, but it couldn’t hurt, so I helped myself to a cup of coffee and a pastry with something rather like a coconut chocolate filling and began going over my options. I didn’t have any, so it didn’t take long. Captain Undra was putting me off her ship and into the hands of people who had been pissed at me for years, and once they had me they wouldn’t have any motivation to even try to fix Reggie.

  “I thought I might find you here. Well, here or one of the other meal dispensaries. This is the third one I’ve visited this morning.” The fragrance of alfalfa followed the words and preceded the appearance of a sentient haystack by only a moment as the the ship’s CMO settled itself across from me.

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “I’ve served on this ship for a while and I know how the captain likes to work. She contacted me this morning, as soon as she’d read my report, to confirm her understanding of it and she told me of her plans for handing you off to the Arconi. I’m sorry, Conroy. I’d never have reached out to them or suggested they come here if I had known the full details of your history with them.”

  “And Reggie’s condition would have only worsened until Undra’s worst suspicions occurred. No, you did nothing wrong. You acted in what you thought were the best interests of your patient. And honestly, Malsh, if I could know they’d do everything in their power to save Reggie, I’d surrender to them in a heartbeat. But I can’t imagine they’re inclined to do me any favors.”

  “Maybe not, but you still have something of value that you can trade for your buffalito’s treatment.”

  I’d just taken a big bite of pastry and had to chew a few times before I could reply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The Pilot has taught you ways to lie to the Arconi, yes?”

  “Okay, first, that’s not his name, and second, yes, but I don’t see how that’s going to help now. I don’t think they care what I have to say at this point.”

  “You misunderstand me. All the Pilot can do is lie to the Arconi.”

  I stared at the haystack, certain that it had more to say. It didn’t. I took another bite of pastry, waiting. Malsh just sat there. “And?”

  “And you have other options. Not everything you say to them has to be falsehood or misdirection. You have other capabilities all your own, including the truth. Use them. Show them. Perhaps they’ll find value in having a demonstration of how their own ability can be defeated and even used against them, at least enough to give Reggie the medical attention he deserves.”

  It was a valid point. Pilate was a prevaricator, he had to lie. But I was a hypnotist, I dealt in bending people’s perceptions of reality. I’d done it with Arconi in the past, and maybe, just maybe, I could manage it again before the captain had me frogmarched off her ship. If I got the chance.

  *

  After my unexpected meeting with Malsh, I reached out to schedule a visit with Pilate via Oetting. My situation had changed from meeting with my personal Arcon to being handed over to him, and I needed the professional liar’s perspective. His A.Y. suggested we meet in my dressing room an hour before my show that night and they were both there before I arrived. I filled them in on my conversations of the morning, both with the captain and the doctor.

  “While I don’t doubt that you could perform a quick induction under the circumstances, I doubt it will work in this instance,” said Oetting. He had resumed his perch on the arm of the loveseat, with Pilate seated next to him as before. “This Loyoka person knows you’re a hypnotist. He’s expecting you to try something like that. He’s had years to research how it works, and he’ll be hyper-vigilant.”

  “Probably, but I can use that. Give him what he’s expecting, and then hit him with a different line of attack, so to speak, while he’s congratulating himself for fending off the obvious one.”

  “As easy as taking candy from a baby wolverine,” said Pilate.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means Pilate thinks you’d have a better chance hypnotizing him, and he can’t be hypnotized.”

  I waved the remark away. “That’s a common misconception. Every human being goes into trance states all the time. Anyone can be hypnotized.”

  “Not a prevaricator,” said Oetting. “He doesn’t have trance states. Or any variations of consciousness any more. No sleeping, no dreaming. Conscious and unconscious and everything in between are all merged together. It’s part of the process.”

  The A.Y.’s words hit me like a blow to the stomach after a birthday dinner. I’d imagined it was one thing to have to go through life forever lying, but to give up everything else felt like an abomination. I’d bounced across dozens of wor
lds and never met anyone whose mind was organized the way Oetting described Pilate’s to be. He was more alien than any alien I’d ever met.

  “You’re not Human any more, are you?”

  “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties!”

  “That’s your answer, to quote Hamlet at me? I’m trying to save my buffalito and the Arconi are going to drag me away and not do a thing to help him!”

  Pilate smiled. “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night follows the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” He stood and gave a curt nod of his head that could have meant shared sorrow or some private joke. Then he turned away.

  “And we’re done here. Good luck, Conroy. We’ll show ourselves out.”

  *

  I floated in darkness, blissfully unaware of the floating, or the dark, or even my lack of awareness. Until a voice spoke to me.

  “Mr. Conroy, do you understand the meaning of interstellar rendition?”

  I opened my eyes, awake without any memory of having gone to sleep. There’d been no gradual transition, no slipping from one state of consciousness to another. I was awake now, a moment ago I wasn’t. I know a thing or two about levels of consciousness, and mine had just changed. I heard sounds, saw shapes, I could taste… something in my mouth, but none of it meant anything. My body had awakened, but my mind hadn’t caught up. Yet. An echo of words repeated in my mind, something about interstellar rendition?

  And without so much as a click or twitch, I was back. The phrase had meaning, all the more so when I saw the being who’d said it. A tall alien, pale as eggshell, with short-cropped blue-black hair. He wore an ill-fitting grey and green jumpsuit, the kind used by the maintenance staff working onboard The Mumby; his sleeves and pant legs stopped a quarter meter too short revealing white ankles and wrists, calves and forearms. I knew him, though we’d only had a few hours of interaction over a handful of days six years ago. I hadn’t seen him since, but I knew he’d been looking for me every single day. He was a cop.

  “Hello, Loyoka.” My showbiz reflexes kicked in, mentally recasting him as a heckler. An interrogation by an obsessed and humorless lawman could get ugly,

  but I could handle a heckler in my sleep. I put on my best stage smile. “I don’t think your disguise will fool anyone aboard ship.”

  “There is no one to fool. You and I are the only ones on this vessel.”

  That couldn’t be. Captain Undra had left no doubt that she was transferring me off The Mumby, but she’d also made it clear that she’d allow me to do so under my own power. But, Loyoka was an Arcon, and the Arconi couldn’t lie. So either everyone else had vanished or we were on a different ship. The words that had awakened me flashed back into my mind and I registered my surroundings, a featureless box maybe three meters in any direction, whiter than Loyoka. No furniture. I sat on the floor, my back against one wall. Both were smooth ceramo and seamless, faintly luminous, and utterly indistinguishable from the other walls and ceiling. A cell. For some inexplicable reason it had a faint scent of sugar cookies.

  “You took me off The Mumby.”

  “I did. I planted a neural dampening pulse device in your stateroom. It activated upon your return and disabled all beings within eight meters. I waited beyond its radius and retrieved you afterward. In a few days’ time, you will stand before the Tribunal and finally face your crimes and your life as you know it will be over.”

  Once upon a time I’d performed in a space port lounge on Gibrahl, an Arcon colony world where his people sell their buffalo dogs. I’d stolen a fertile one out from under Loyoka’s nose and broken their monopoly. I’d built a multi-billion credit corporation with customers on dozens of worlds throughout Human Space, and recently lost it all when one of my employees betrayed me. I was okay with the loss, but not so much with the idea of facing Arconi justice.

  I yawned and stretched, trying for a nonchalance that I didn’t feel. I thought about the Arconi telepathic gift of always knowing when someone is lying. Powerful stuff, but too literal as Pilate had shown me. In a game of literal language twenty questions I’d lose my shirt and more. That wouldn’t help Reggie. I needed not merely to lie without technically lying, I also had to shape the conversation like I would with a hypnotic induction. I needed subtlety. “What crimes are you talking about? The only crime I see is the one where you abducted me, as you just admitted.”

  “Crimes against the Arconi economy. You ended our control of the sale of buffalitos and you accomplished this by unlawful means.”

  “I wonder if you’ve really examined the full scope of these alleged crimes? I undercut your rates, and I trained my animals to do more with their abilities than you’d thought up. How is any of that unlawful?”

  “Are you saying you didn’t smuggle a buffalito off Gibrahl?”

  He stared into my eyes waiting for my answer. I’d done it, of course. Saying so would be a confession. Denying it would be a blatant falsehood that would ping his built-in lie detector. The big lesson from all of Pilate’s training boiled down to this: never answer the question you’re asked.

  “You asked me that the last time you saw me, just as I was leaving Gibrahl. Do you remember my answer?”

  “I do. You said you were not a smuggler.”

  “Was I lying?”

  He scowled. “No.”

  “Then, if you already know the answer, why are you asking me again? A better question to ask might be why your people are so worried about smugglers, and whether that worry is even justified.”

  “I see no point in such conjecture.”

  “That’s a shame. Even Arconi can, you know, benefit from asking the right questions.”

  Loyoka’s scowl deepened. “My operatives have retrieved all of your corporation’s breeding stock of buffalo dogs. Ninety-six animals that our geneticists have traced back to animals originating on Gibrahl. These facts point to an illegally obtained breeder.”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t necessarily point to me. When I left Gibrahl it was as a licensed buffalito courier.”

  Loyoka nodded. “Yes, you were to deliver an animal to the Wada Consortium. How is it then that you retained possession of it?”

  “If you’re talking about Reggie, it’s well documented that they gave him to me,” I said, staring him in the eye, daring him to doubt the truth of it. “Speaking of whom, where is he?”

  “The creature was also in your stateroom. It succumbed to the same neural dampener, so I took it as well.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not an Arcon. I don’t have your power of veracity. If you took Reggie when you took me, then prove it. Bring him here.”

  “Let us be clear, Mr. Conroy. You do not give me orders. You are my prisoner. Do not waste your concerns on a pet. Your time would be better spent worrying about the trial that awaits you upon the Arconi homeworld.”

  “That’s not important,” I said. “You know why Dr. Malsh contacted your government. The only thing I’m worried about is Reggie. He’s dying. And I think your people have the power to change that. That’s what matters. Nothing else. Nothing!”

  Loyoka blinked. He’d heard literal truth in my words and something about it appeared to surprise him. A portion of the wall opened behind him. He stepped back and the wall closed again, leaving me all alone in a white room.

  *

  Time must have been passing, that’s what it does, but sitting inside a softly lit white box made it hard to tell how much had gone by. Nor did I have any sense of how long I’d been unconscious before waking up to the Arcon’s unsmiling face. Back on The Mumby I’d gone out and done my show after Pilate and Oetting had left, and followed it with a light dinner in my dressing room before calling it a night. I remembered taking Reggie with me as I set out for my stateroom but I couldn’t remember actually getting there. I felt rested, like I’d had a full night’s sleep. Neither hunger nor thirst had se
t in, nor the need to perform the more basic bodily functions. If these were side effects of Loyoka’s kidnapping device, he really needed to market it for travelers.

  My tiny cell didn’t lend itself to pacing, so I performed the act mentally instead, counting off imaginary footsteps in a sing-song cadence. I got bored with it quickly, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do and kept it up for a good half-kilometer. Then I switched to mentally reviewing my last few performances, evaluating audience reactions, and toying with bits of patter that might go over better next time and variations on suggestions I could try. That had to have used up a few hours but I felt no different. I considered doing a cognitive conjuring trick and chatting with my dead great aunt Fiona, but rejected the notion because the effort would leave me drained; plus she’d probably worry about my situation. I mused for a while about women I’d known, which got me thinking about the many nonhuman people I’d had the pleasure of meeting, which in turn took me around to some really memorable meals I’d shared with some of them, and finally back to the topic I’d been trying to avoid thinking about at all. Reggie.

  Loyoka had dismissed him as a mere pet, but my buffalo dog was much more than that. Reggie was my boon companion. I couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t include him at my side, sharing meals with me in fine restaurants and at street corner carts, traveling together from one planetary performance venue to the next, sleeping comfortably in my carpet bag. If Loyoka had indeed taken Reggie along while abducting me, where then was my buffalito? Why wasn’t he in my cell with me?

  The wall in front of me shimmered and grew an opening, just big enough to admit the Arcon. It sealed itself behind him as soon as he entered, becoming just a wall again. Loyoka looked… concerned.

  “Since meeting you on Gibrahl, I have reviewed our interaction in detail. I have analyzed every word that passed between us. I have done this innumerable times.”

  Being the object of a cop’s concern — particularly one involved in abduction — never bodes well, but it seemed like one of those situations where it might be better to light a candle than curse the darkness, even if I hadn’t a clue what that light would reveal. “Toward what end?”